


Non-Stop

by fineandwittie



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angst, Dueling, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-07-13 23:31:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7142819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fineandwittie/pseuds/fineandwittie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hamilton was wearing his glasses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Non-Stop

**Author's Note:**

> A prompt from a friend that I couldn't help but fill.

_Hamilton was wearing his glasses. Burr noticed this fact the moment the former Treasury Secretary showed up on the field, but it did not seem important. But now, it seemed to be all Burr could think of. He lay in the damp grass, body numb and mind fixated on Alexander’s glasses._

_Perhaps they had helped him see his target better. Perhaps they were for show, to distract Burr. Perhaps he merely forgot to take them off before leaving the house that morning. Before leaving his lovely Eliza sleeping beneath their coverlet. Before leaving to come to such a strange meeting with a fool’s purpose. Burr realized now that it had been a fool’s purpose. He has been the fool._

_He had always been reticent with his personal beliefs. ‘Talk less, smile more’ had been the advice he’d given Alexander all those years before. Of course, at the time it had been because he’d been captivated by the young man’s smile, but they stuck. He kept his plans close to his chest. If he had merely been honest with Alexander, if he’d spoken to him in earnest, if he’d…done a hundred other things, made a hundred other decisions, had never run for president at all, had died in the war, had told Alexander how he felt from the first moment…_

_But there was no more waiting. His own end had come at the hands of the other. At those nimble, darting hands that Alexander used to such effect. Burr couldn’t feel the pain of the gunshot wound that he had sustained. He couldn’t feel his life’s blood seeping out of him into the dirt. He couldn’t see Alexander, who had probably already left him to his fate._

_This, he thought as the edges of his vision dimmed and colors began to blur, this is what I deserved._

The candle was almost burnt out when Aaron finally sat back and put his quill back into its inkwell. His back ached, his eyes burned, and his face felt as though it might crack to pieces at any moment. He reached up to scrub the feeling away and realized he’d been crying. Again.

This entire proposition was insane. He knew it was insane. But he couldn’t help himself. Jefferson, who had hated Alexander in life, apparently loved him in death because he refused point blank to treat with the man’s murderer. Aaron had tried to convince him that killing someone in a duel wasn’t murder, but it had been halfhearted at best. 

Alexander would have been the only person who could have pulled that feat off anyway. And he would never write another word. Because Aaron had allowed his pride and his wounded heart to get free of his control. He should have realized that, not only was the world wide enough for them both, but that Alexander was totally accurate in his character assassination. Aaron was…well…he was barely fit to serve at Alexander’s table, never mind treat with the man as an equal. He had been delusional and Alexander’s death had shown him just how deep that delusion had gone. 

They had been torn to pieces, his delusions of grandeur. His reputation was in ruins, thanks to a post mortem surge in Hamilton’s popularity. His job was a joke. The man he had…He couldn’t call it love, but it was something just as potent. Hatred perhaps. The man he had dedicated himself to for decades was dead. He had spent so long in Alexander’s orbit that he no longer knew how to exist outside of it. 

So he sat, hunched over his desk, candles burning day and night, writing like Alexander. Writing like he was running out of time, like his very life depended on it. And perhaps it did. 

He could rebuild what he had destroy, with words and sentences and ink on paper. He could breath new life into Alexander and extinguish his own, as should by rights have been what happened. He could fix this. 

A voice in the back of his mind, one that sounded distressingly like Alexander, whispered, _There is no fixing this. There is nothing left to wait for. You murdered Alexander Hamilton. You. Murderer._

Murderer. He sees the word in the newspapers and he hears it on the lips of passersby when he goes out for groceries in the morning. He sees it in his eyes when he looks into a looking-glass to shave. He feels it on his skin when he tries to wash off the blood that never even touched him because they wouldn’t let him anywhere near Alexander. He didn’t even get to say goodbye, to say he was sorry, to say how much Alexander had meant to him, had shaped him, had—  


There are fresh tears now and he’s having trouble breathing. He hates what this has done to him. His pistol sits on its stand on the sideboard. He watches the firelight play over it, longingly. He can imagine the heft of it in his hand. How it feels loaded and down one bullet. He wonders what it would taste like in his mouth. 

He pulls a fresh sheet of paper from his desk, replaces the candle, and picks up his quill.

**Author's Note:**

> Titled so, because Burr's brain is going non-stop now.


End file.
